AI & Accessibility: How AI Breaks Down Barriers – and Creates New Ones
to
Key Learnings
- • AI can offer people with disabilities significant value and greater independence
- • Opportunities and risks go hand in hand — especially when it comes to bias, transparency, and inclusion
- • To ensure AI truly supports accessibility, it must be intentionally and early integrated into the development process
Speakers
Speaker: Dagmar Wehr
Profession: Experience Designer AX
Workplace: Deutsche Telekom IT GmbH
Description
Artificial intelligence opens up entirely new possibilities for making digital products more accessible to people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. From automatic image descriptions and adaptive interfaces to intelligent voice and gesture interaction — AI has the potential to remove barriers like no other technology. But not every AI-driven solution is inherently inclusive. This session also addresses key risks such as algorithmic bias, lack of robustness, or the creation of new forms of exclusion. AI is also transforming how we design and build digital products — yet no one can predict what the AI landscape will look like in autumn 2026. In this session, I will share our learning journey as we began integrating AI into our development process to make our products more accessible. You’ll hear what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised us. We will look at concrete examples: automatic image descriptions, AI-assisted testing, and the pitfalls we faced when dealing with bias, data quality, and transparency. The goal is not to present a perfect blueprint — but real, practical insights from day-to-day experience. If you want to understand both the potential as well as the reality of using AI for accessibility — and learn from real-world practice rather than theory — this session is for you.